different between sympathize vs condole

English

Alternative forms

• sympathise

Etymology

From French sympathiser.

Pronunciation

Verb

sympathize (third-person singular simple present sympathizes, present participle sympathizing, simple past and past participle sympathized) (Canada, US)

1. (intransitive) To have, show or express sympathy; to be affected by feelings similar to those of another, in consequence of knowing the person to be thus affected.
   • 1712, Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 273, republished in Notes upon the Twelve Books of Paradise Lost, London: Jacob Tonson, 1719, p. 13,^[1]

     […] the Authors having chosen for their Heroes Persons who were so nearly related to the People for whom they wrote. Achilles was a Greek, and Aeneas the remote Founder of Rome. By this Means their Countrymen (whom they principally proposed to themselves for their Readers) were particularly attentive to all the Parts of their Story, and sympathized with their Heroes in all their Adventures.

   • 1868, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Chapter 19,^[2]

     Some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children’s little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way.

   • 1925, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York: Scribner, Chapter 3, p. 52,^[3]

     The wives were sympathizing with each other in slightly raised voices.

2. (intransitive) To support, favour, have sympathy (with a political cause or movement, a side in a conflict / in an action).
   • 1855, Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Chapter 31,^[4]

     ‘ […] who is to hunt up my witnesses? All of them are sailors, drafted off to other ships, except those whose evidence would go for very little, as they took part, or sympathised in the affair. […] ’

   • 1919, Saki, “The Threat” in The Toys of Peace and Other Papers, London: John Lane, p. 150,^[5]

     “Whether one sympathises with the agitation for female suffrage or not one has to admit that its promoters showed tireless energy and considerable enterprise in devising and putting into action new methods for accomplishing their ends. […] ”

   • 1936, Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, New York: Macmillan, 1944, Part 2, Chapter 9, p. 171,^[6]

     […] naturally the British aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, as one aristocrat with another, against a race of dollar lovers like the Yankees.

   • 1953, Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking, Chapter 3, pp. 41-42,^[7]

     He’d go to […] Soviet Russia—now giving us the whole story, that he sympathized with the Reds and admired Lenin […]

3. (transitive) To say in an expression of sympathy.
   • 1995, Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, Chapter 3, p. 133,^[8]

     “How much he slapped my sons—you should see their swollen faces, Panditji,” said Dukhi. […]

     “Poor children,” sympathized Pandit Lallaram.

4. (intransitive) To have a common feeling, as of bodily pleasure or pain.
   • 1814, J. S. Buckminster, Sermons, Boston, Sermon 3, p. 55,^[9]

     […] the mind will sympathize so much with the anguish and debility of the body, that it will be […] too distracted to fix itself in meditation.

5. (transitive, obsolete) To share (a feeling or experience).
   • c. 1589, William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act V, Scene 1,^[10]

     And all that are assembled in this place,

     That by this sympathized one day’s error

     Have suffer’d wrong, go keep us company,

     And we shall make full satisfaction.

6. (intransitive) To agree; to be in accord; to harmonize.
   • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act V, Scene 1,^[11]

     Henry V. The southern wind

     Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,

     And by his hollow whistling in the leaves

     Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.

     Henry IV. Then with the losers let it sympathize,

     For nothing can seem foul to those that win.

   • 1695 John Dryden (translator), De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy, London: W. Rogers, p. 175,^[12]

     Green, for example, is a pleasing Colour, which may come from a blue and a yellow mix’d together, and by consequence blue and yellow are two Colours which sympathize:

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 8,^[13]

     Then personal appearance sympathised with mental deterioration: he acquired a slouching gait and ignoble look; his naturally reserved disposition was exaggerated into an almost idiotic excess of unsociable moroseness […]

Usage notes

Used similarly to empathize, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, empathize is stronger and more intimate, while sympathize is weaker and more distant. See empathy: usage notes.

Further, the general “agree, accord” sense of sympathize is not shared with empathize.

Derived terms

• sympathizer
• sympathizingly

Related terms

• sympathetic
• sympathy

Translations

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin condoleo, condolere (“to suffer with another”).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -??l

Verb

condole (third-person singular simple present condoles, present participle condoling, simple past and past participle condoled)

1. (intransitive) To express sympathetic sorrow; to lament in sympathy (with someone on something).
   • 1674, William Temple, “To the Countess of Essex upon Her Grief occasioned by the loss of Her only Daughter” in Miscellanea, London: Edward Gellibrand, 1680, pp. 170-171,^[1]

     […] your friends would have cause to rejoyce rather than condole with you […]

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume 3, Chapter 5,^[2]

     “ […] lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters, if they could be of use to us.”

   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 44,^[3]

     Since the Captain’s visit, she had received a letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her on the loss of her baby […]

   • 1900, Stephen Crane, “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” in Wounds in the Rain: War Stories, New York: Frederick A. Stokes, p. 75,^[4]

     Little Nell condoled and condoled without difficulty. He laid words of gentle sympathy before them, and smothered his own misery behind the face of a reporter of the New York Eclipse.

2. (transitive) To condole with (someone).
   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, Scene 1,^[5]

     Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins we will live.

   • 1662, John Donne, “A Cabinet of Merry Conceits” in Donne’s Satyr, London: M. Wright, No. 98, p. 64,^[6]

     I not condole the dead, but those who’re living,

     To whom the fear of death, gives cause of grieveing.

   • 1958, Karen Blixen (as Isak Dinesen), “Babette’s Feast” in Anecdotes of Destiny, London: Michael Joseph,^[7]

     When in early days the sisters had gently condoled her upon her losses, they had been met with that majesty and stoicism of which Monsieur Papin had written. ‘What will you ladies?’ she had answered, shrugging her shoulders, ‘it is Fate.’

3. (transitive) To say in an expression of sympathy.
   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses, London: The Egoist Press, p. 252,^[8]

     — So sad to look at his face, Miss Douce condoled.

   • 1940, Marjorie Bowen (as Joseph Shearing), The Crime of Laura Sarelle, Berkley Medallion, 1965, Part One,^[9]

     “You still look faint, my dear,” condoled Mrs. Sylk. “It is the motion and smell of this hideous train. How it rocks! […] ”

   • 1988, Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library, Penguin, Chapter 7, p. 146,^[10]

     ‘There’s always another time,’ I condoled feebly.

4. (transitive, obsolete) To lament, grieve, bemoan (something).
   • 1624, John Donne, “23. Meditation” in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, London: Thomas Jones, p. 599,^[11]

     […] compassion it selfe, comes to no great degree, if wee haue not felt, in some proportion, in our selues, that which wee lament and condole in another.

   • 1680, John Dryden, “The Preface to Ovid’s Epistles” in Ovid’s Epistles translated by several hands, London: Jacob Tonson,^[12]

     If Julia were then Married to Agrippa, why should our Poet make his Petition to Isis, for her safe Delivery, and afterwards, Condole her Miscarriage; which for ought he knew might be by her own Husband?

   • 1703, William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, London: James Knapton, Volume I, Chapter 5, p. 127,^[13]

     […] whether it be natural to the Indians to be thus melancholy, or the effect of their Slavery, I am not certain: But I have always been prone to believe, that they are then only condoling their Misfortunes, the loss of their Country and Liberties […]

   • 1720, Daniel Defoe, The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, Of the Famous Captain Singleton, London: J. Brotherton, pp. 69-70,^[14]

     As soon as we had fired, they set up the horridest Yell, or Howling, partly raised by those that were wounded, and partly by those that pitied and condoled the Bodies they saw lye dead, that I never heard any thing like it before or since.

Related terms

• condolence

Translations

Anagrams

• cold one

Latin

Verb

condol?

1. second-person singular present active imperative of condole?